Great read this week in Slate about what went wrong in Afghanistan. To echo Greyhawk’s sentiments, the fact that no where in the article is blame for Afghanistan’s decline blamed on the war in Iraq definitely makes the article worth a read:

Both candidates for the U.S. presidency pledged to make Afghanistan a top priority. The war there now tops the news on a daily basis with tales of the devastating hardships of the Afghan people and the deaths of Afghans and NATO soldiers. The untold story is that Afghanistan was well on its way to stability in 2004. It is essential that President Obama understands why the nation slipped into chaos. The challenge now is to win the peace. (…)

What went wrong? This is not the time for a detailed account, but some elementary mistakes are worth highlighting. [Slate]

Read the rest of the article to see what went wrong but none of it had to do with not having enough troops in Afghanistan. Much of the problems has to do with the international community and NGOs not following through on their promises in funding the Afghan government and having no strategy in rebuilding Afghan communities. These failures led to the discrediting of the Afghan government which opened up the door to the Taliban again.

The views of the author of this article Clare Lockhart actually echoes the views that former Under Secretary of Defene Douglas Feith wrote in his book about how in Afghanistan the international community was not following through on their promises and expected the US to pick up the slack. For example in 2002 after a number of UN sponsored donors’ conferences lead nations were selected to help the Afghan government in certain areas. For example the British volunteered to combat the drug trade, the Germans volunteered to help rebuild the Afghan police force, and the Italians volunteered to rebuild the courts.

Feith states that these countries never seriously devoted the resources necessary to rebuild these institutions of government expecting the US to pick up the slack like what was done in the Balkans. The Italians he stated didn’t send a single person to begin rebuilding the Afghan judiciary branch until well over a year after volunteering to take up that role. The Pentagon resisted picking up the slack because Secretary Rumsfeld wanted these NATO allies to carry their fair share of the burden of rebuilding Afghanistan as they promised to do. Rumsfeld pressured the State Department to push these allies to do what they said they would do but State was hesitant to pressure these allies because they didn’t want to embarrass them and State generally felt the Pentagon should just pick up the slack instead:

It had taken substantial work to identify US funds available to help us train the Afghan Army, a commitment we had already undertaken. And we all knew the US government would need funds to do other important and costly reconstruction tasks in Afghanistan. When I questioned State’s $20 million plus proposal, on the grounds that police training was Germany’s obligation, the State official responded that Germany wasn’t going to do it, so that was that.

The post-conflict period in Afghanistan was the beginning of the tension between the State Department and the Pentagon that would eventually carry over into the pre & post-Iraq War period. Interestingly the nation Feith points out that did follow through on their promises to Afghanistan was Japan. The Japanese agreed to lead a UN effort to disarm militias and find new jobs for their members. Feith states that this effort was properly funded and resourced and most of the militias were disarmed and folded into the Afghan National Army.

Like Iraq, no troop surge in Afghanistan is going to work without a new strategy. The troop surge in Iraq worked because it was part of a larger counterinsurgency strategy. The strategy in Afghanistan will not be the same as Iraq but Clare Lockhart provides some good recommendations that President-Elect Obama would be wise to listen before simply deciding to throw troops at the problem.

More about Clare Lockhart’s views along with the co-author of a book she wrote with Ashraf Ghani can be listened to below: